PREFACE
To young people today, the world as a global village appears as a given, a ready-
made order, as if human evolution all along was logically moving towards our high-
tech, market-driven society, dominated by the wealthy United States. To bring the
world to order, the US must bear the burden of oversize defense spending, capture
terrorists, eliminate dictators, and warn ungrateful nations like China and Russia to
adjust their policies so as not to hinder the US in its altruistic mission civilatrice.
The reality is something else entirely, the only truth in the above characterization
being the overwhelming military dominance of the US in the world today. The US
itself is the source of much of the world’s terrorism, its 1.6 million troops in over a
thousand bases around the world the most egregious terrorists, leaving the Osama bin
Ladens in the shade, and other lesser critics of US policies worried about their job
prospects.
My own realization of the true nature of the world order began with my journey to
England to study economics at Cambridge University in September 1973. I decided to
take the luxury SS France ocean liner which offered a student rate of a few hundred
dollars (and unlimited luggage), where I met American students on Marshall and
Rhodes scholarships (I had the less prestigious Mackenzie King scholarship), and used
my wiles to enjoy the perks of first class. The ship was a microcosm of society, a
benign one. The world was my oyster and I wanted to share my joy with everyone.
But I was in for a shock. Cambridge was also a microcosm of society, but a very
different one. My friends at Cambridge included many Latin Americans, and the tragic
events of that September 11 – the US-orchestrated coup against Salvador Allende in
Chile – were what I was to cut my political teeth on. The look of despair on the face of
a Chilean friend, suddenly a refugee whose friends and family were now in peril, was
etched in my memory. That began my path of study and activism, and drove home to
me the essence of the world political and economic system. Imperialism was not an
abstraction, but a devastating force that destroyed good, idealistic people, whole
peoples. Enemies of imperialism must be reconsidered, in the first place, the Soviet
Union, which until then I had accepted as a dangerous and evil force in the world.
I immediately began studying Russian and was determined to experience Soviet
reality from the inside. The “Soviet threat” was the pretext for Nixon’s undermining the
Chilean revolution. It was the pretext for the blockade of Cuba. It was the pretext for
the horrors the US was inflicting on the Vietnamese. Was it really the evil empire
which I had been indoctrinated into fearing and loathing my entire life? I had to find
out for myself.
Looking back on this turning point in my life, I can only marvel at the few slight
breathing spaces in the Cold War that allowed people to reject the capitalist
paradigm, to realize who the real enemy is. As opposed to Thatcher's TINA (There Is
No Alternative) – There Was An Alternative (TWAA)! Fear of this ‘enemy’ quickly
evaporated among intelligent mainstream people in the West during the periods of
detente (1941–48, 1963–68, 1973–79). These brief respites were tactical retreats in
the long-term fight by imperialism, biding its time.
My studies were framed by the coup in Chile in September 1973 and the liberation of
Saigon in the spring of 1975. Celebrating the latter moment with my friends in the
university cafeteria is also etched in my mind. The world belonged to us. The low
point for US imperialism, the high point (the last, it turned out) for the Soviet Union. I
studied with Marxists such as Maurice Dobb, and neo-Ricardians such as Piero Sraffa,
Luigi Pasinetti, and Joan Robinson, and suddenly saw the twentieth century through
new lenses.
Upon my return to Toronto, I sought out what I learned were called “fellow travelers”.
There weren't so many as I expected. In desperation, I looked in the phone book under
USSR, but there was not even a Soviet Consulate in Canada’s largest city (though
there was a Bulgarian, a Czech, even a Cuban one). I eventually stumbled across the
Canada-USSR Friendship Society, a motley collection of primarily Slavic and east
European immigrants, Jews, with a smattering of WASP peaceniks. A friendly if
doctrinaire group, with no sign of any super spies like Kim Philby. In retrospect, I see
that the peacenik contingent was more conspicuous in its absence.
With great difficulty, I got to Moscow in 1979 to study Russian at Moscow State
University (MGU) through the Friendship Society, a bizarre and memorable experience
to say the least. I fell sick and became sicker after a short stay in a filthy hospital, but
managed to stick it out till we were peremptorily shunted to unfinished Olympic
accommodations in order to make room for newly revolutionary Ethiopian students at
MGU.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan took place as we trudged through the freezing mud
to our new residence in December, the subsequent collapse of détente playing out on
an international stage my own frustrations with “real existing socialism”, a system that
left no room for criticism or doubt in the face of much nonsense and cruelty.
My former enthusiasm for Soviet-style communism* was gone; however, on returning to
North America, I was faced with the mindless propaganda and belligerence of Reagan
America, and I realized that my love affair with the ornery Soviet beast was not over –
TWAA. When Gorbachev dismantled censorship (glasnost) and began his ill-fated
economic reforms (perestroika), I landed a job at Moscow News. My sense of urgency
in getting there ASAP was not ill-founded, as it turned out.
The brief respites from the Cold War and this final crazy attempt to create a ‘nice’
socialism were indeed remarkable. The US actually feared and respected another
country, and that country held out its diplomatic hand in friendship, only to find itself
subverted by its new ‘friend’. The Bushes and now Obama have all vowed since never
to let another country challenge the US militarily again. How ironic, now that military
superiority has lost all meaning in an age of dirty bombs and anthrax.
The Soviet Union produced environmental disasters, notably the death of the Aral
Sea. Collective farming enforced at gunpoint destroyed a vibrant peasant tradition.
The gulags and Stalinist repression were a terrible tragedy. But colonialism and
fascism killed far more innocent people, and both were aggressive, starting wars with
other countries. The Soviet Union was a one-party system, a dictatorship, but not an
aggressively expanding empire, contrary to what we were and are indoctrinated into
believing.
For all its political flaws, it showed the viability of a non-capitalist way of organizing
technologically advanced urban society. Its economic flaws – inefficiency,
sloppiness, low standards, ecological disregard – were countered by its pluses –
guaranteed employment, free public services, encouragement of modest material
needs, broad access to culture, security for the individual, a less competitive more
egalitarian lifestyle. This is how it was understood in the third world, where its passing
is still mourned.
Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the main foe of Israel, I hadn’t paid special
attention to the Middle East, assuming that as the anti-imperialist forces grew, Israel
would be pressured to make peace. The assassination of Yitzak Rabin in 1994 and the
ascendancy of the neocons made it clear that this was not going to happen.
The defeat of communism meant that the only remaining anti-imperialist cultural
force was Islam, and I was drawn to Uzbekistan in Central Asia, with a vibrant Muslim
heritage. This culminated in another major turning point for me – watching the twin
towers collapse 28 years after the “9/11” coup in Chile, on that more familiar “9/11” of
2001, in bleak post-Soviet Tashkent.
My immediate reaction was that their collapse simply could not be the work of a band
of poorly trained Muslims orchestrated by someone in a cave in neighboring
Afghanistan. Subsequent study has confirmed to me that the events of 2001 had far
more to do with US imperialism – and Israel – than Islam.
I am fortunate to have lived my life on both sides of the “Iron Curtain” and now in the
heart of the supposed enemy today – the Islamic world. This has given me the
opportunity to experience alternative realities, to step back from my western heritage
and see more clearly how the western world confronts and plays with other countries
and cultures. There are many such journeys of discovering by people coming of age
politically. I hope my reflections provide readers the opportunity to step back from
their frame of reference, and help them understand the games we are forced to play.
***
*A note on the use of the term communism, capitalism and imperialism: communism
refers to both the theory as proposed by Marx and the attempts to realize the theory as
embodied in the social formations of post-1917 Russia and post-WWII eastern Europe.
While the latter strayed far from the theory, they were nonetheless inspired by Marx.
Critics may replace “communism” with “failed workers’ state” or “state capitalism” as
they like. This does not undermine the overall thesis about communism made here. I
treat the terms capitalism and imperialism as scientific terms as used by Marx and
Lenin. The Soviet Union became a ruthless dictatorship under Stalin, but the logic of
it and its relations with eastern Europe was not imperialist. To use such terms
cavalierly to refer to noncapitalist social formations would reduce any analysis to
rubble -- a kind of intellectual 9/11, an apt metaphor for how US capitalist mind-
control prevents any real opposition from taking root.
|
|
